Tropical lowland rainforests are increasingly threatened by the expansion of agriculture and the extraction of natural resources. In Jambi Province, Indonesia, the interdisciplinary EFForTS project focuses on the ecological and socio-economic dimensions of rainforest conversion to jungle rubber agroforests and monoculture plantations of rubber and oil palm. Our data confirm that rainforest transformation and land use intensification lead to substantial losses in biodiversity and related ecosystem functions, such as decreased above- and below-ground carbon stocks. Owing to rapid step-wise transformation from forests to agroforests to monoculture plantations and renewal of each plantation type every few decades, the converted land use systems are continuously dynamic, thus hampering the adaptation of animal and plant communities. On the other hand, agricultural rainforest transformation systems provide increased income and access to education, especially for migrant smallholders. Jungle rubber and rubber monocultures are associated with higher financial land productivity but lower financial labour productivity compared to oil palm, which influences crop choice: smallholders that are labour-scarce would prefer oil palm while land-scarce smallholders would prefer rubber. Collecting long-term data in an interdisciplinary context enables us to provide decision-makers and stakeholders with scientific insights to facilitate the reconciliation between economic interests and ecological sustainability in tropical agricultural landscapes.
Oil palm plantations have expanded rapidly in recent decades. This large-scale land-use change has had great ecological, economic, and social impacts on both the areas converted to oil palm and their surroundings. However, research on the impacts of oil palm cultivation is scattered and patchy, and no clear overview exists. We address this gap through a systematic and comprehensive literature review of all ecosystem functions in oil palm plantations, including several (genetic, medicinal and ornamental resources, information functions) not included in previous systematic reviews. We compare ecosystem functions in oil palm plantations to those in forests, as the conversion of forest to oil palm is prevalent in the tropics. We find that oil palm plantations generally have reduced ecosystem functioning compared to forests: 11 out of 14 ecosystem functions show a net decrease in level of function. Some functions show decreases with potentially irreversible global impacts (e.g. reductions in gas and climate regulation, habitat and nursery functions, genetic resources, medicinal resources, and information functions). The most serious impacts occur when forest is cleared to establish new plantations, and immediately afterwards, especially on peat soils. To variable degrees, specific plantation management measures can prevent or reduce losses of some ecosystem functions (e.g. avoid illegal land clearing via fire, avoid draining of peat, use of integrated pest management, use of cover crops, mulch, and compost) and we highlight synergistic mitigation measures that can improve multiple ecosystem functions simultaneously. The only ecosystem function which increases in oil palm plantations is, unsurprisingly, the production of marketable goods. Our review highlights numerous research gaps. In particular, there are significant gaps with respect to socio-cultural information functions. Further, there is a need for more empirical data on the importance of spatial and temporal scales, such as differences among plantations in different environments, of different sizes, and of different ages, as our review has identified examples where ecosystem functions vary spatially and temporally. Finally, more research is needed on developing management practices that can offset the losses of ecosystem functions. Our findings should stimulate research to address the identified gaps, and provide a foundation for more systematic research and discussion on ways to minimize the negative impacts and maximize the positive impacts of oil palm cultivation.
Smallholder-dominated agricultural mosaic landscapes are highlighted as model production systems that deliver both economic and ecological goods in tropical agricultural landscapes, but trade-offs underlying current land-use dynamics are poorly known. Here, using the most comprehensive quantification of land-use change and associated bundles of ecosystem functions, services and economic benefits to date, we show that Indonesian smallholders predominantly choose farm portfolios with high economic productivity but low ecological value. The more profitable oil palm and rubber monocultures replace forests and agroforests critical for maintaining above- and below-ground ecological functions and the diversity of most taxa. Between the monocultures, the higher economic performance of oil palm over rubber comes with the reliance on fertilizer inputs and with increased nutrient leaching losses. Strategies to achieve an ecological-economic balance and a sustainable management of tropical smallholder landscapes must be prioritized to avoid further environmental degradation.
This volume presents the results of five years' research on the processes of the propertisation of culture that have been carried out by the Research Unit 772 on The Constitution of Cultural Property (speaker: Regina Bendix), sponsored by the German Research Council (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft). 1 Our research focused on the certification and heritisation of culture (nominations and listing of tangible and intangible UNESCO World Heritages) during the first three years. Since 2011, we have been investigating how "culture", or more specifically adat (concepts of traditional ways of life and values), is shaped and deployed by various actors in Indonesia to define their identities, reclaim rights and property, and reposition themselves in the multi-ethnic state of Indonesia since the fall of the Suharto regime (1998). A workshop entitled "Adat between state governance and self-determined indigeneity in Indonesia" was held at Göttingen University in October 2011. The preliminary results of the most recent anthropological research on adat or rather on "indigeneity" in Indonesia were presented by scholars at this workshop, including our much-valued research fellow from Jakarta, Fadjar Ibnu Thufail, from the Göttingen projects, and also by a scholar from Bonn University. Since the struggles for recognition of a special adat particularly of "indigenous groups" in Indonesia can only be understood against 1 The research on which the chapter by Steinebach is based was carried out during a project within the Collaborative Research Centre 990, "Ecological and Socioeconomic Functions of Tropical Lowland Rainforest Transformation Systems (Sumatra, Indonesia)", also based at Göttingen University. 4 Brigitta Hauser-Schäublin the background of international conventions and aid programmes for the promotion of indigenous peoples, two scholars from the International Law Department of Göttingen University (Katja Göcke and Maria Victoria Cabrera Ormaza) were invited, as well as the well-known Indonesian lawyer and indigenous peoples activist, Sandra Moniaga, to present their perspective on the issue of indigeneity. The present volume mirrors this anthropological-international law cooperation and exchange of views on indigeneity. We are grateful that two lawyers from Indonesia, Yance Arizona and Erasmus Cahyadi, wrote an insightful paper on the current state of affairs on a special law on indigenous peoples in Indonesia. Francesca Merlan, the renowned anthropologist from the National University in Canberra and an expert on "indigeneity", spent a month as a Fellow of the Research Unit at Göttingen in June 2013. We all benefitted tremendously from her lectures, the comments she gave on earlier versions of several chapters and her insights. She has written an Epilogue to the volume from an encompassing, comparative perspective. I would like to thank her for writing this important chapter, for her commitment and the fruitful discussions we had in a very friendly and relaxed atmosphere. This research only took place with the great help ...
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